For Emscherkunst German artist Tobias Zielony created a film that focuses on the tamil community in Dortmund, the biggest in all of Europe. Since 2012 the soccer team “Tamilstars” exists in Dortmund, which by now plays in the “Kreisliga B”, the 8th tier of league football in Germany. The team shares its soccer field in Dortmund-Brackel with one other team. In the film the familiar grounds of a German soccer field become the setting of eerie and strange incidents. The floodlights go out and on the field the “stars” of tamil mythology or the booming tamil film industry appear under black light: From evil spirits to “Bollywood-dancers”. The stereo-animation will be shown in an empty shop in Dortmund’s Rheinische Strasse. The lights are dimmed and in the shop-window the “Tamil Stars”-sign blinks – visible from afar.
Tamil Stars, 2016
HD video
HD video, Stereo Animation/Stop Motion, 5:7, color, silent, 9:22 min, Edition of 8 + 2AP
Tobias Zielony
Tobias Zielony is known for his photographic depictions of young people living on the fringes of affluent societies and social acceptance. For the past 20 years, Zielony has focused on suburban milieus that, from Canada to England, Ukraine, Israel, and Japan, have in common that they have fallen out of the promises of modernity's progress and are establishing a temporary life in their own cultural niches. What goes hand in hand with melancholy at the same time reveals a great human tenderness in the cohesion of precarious communities, which Zielony approaches and gives the space to stage themselves. In the process, Zielony's critical approach to documentary manifests itself in a specific aesthetic and relationship to fiction. His numerous institutional exhibitions include the German Pavilion in Venice 2015. Tobias Zielony is a professor in Hamburg since 2022.
Zielony´s work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions recently such as Watching TV in Narva (KOW Berlin 2023), Dark Data (Marta Herford 2022) and Touch. Politiken der Berührung (EMOP Berlin, c/o Amtsalon 2023), Nach August Sander Menschen des 21. Jahrhunderts (Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen 2022).
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony